MSI Unveils Six Flavors Of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Cards

It seems as though everyone and their grandma is releasing new GeForce GTX 1080 graphics cards today, and MSI is no exception. The company has no less than six new GeForce GTX 1080 cards on tap, and any one of them would be a worthy addition to your gaming rig.

For starters, you should know that all six cards are built using the same Pascal base, which means you’ll get 2,560 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR5X memory running on a 256-bit bus. In its base configuration, the GeForce GTX 1080 has a base clock of 1697 MHz and a boost clock of 1733 MHz.

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8 uses a new TWIN FROZR VI cooling system with red highlights throughout. The new thermal design uses TORX Fan 2.0 technology that provides 22 percent more air pressure and Double Ball Bearing fans help to enable better cooling performance and lower noise levels.

According to MSI, this “Balls of Steel” thermal solution allows the card to achieve speeds of 1607 MHz / 1733 MHz (Base Clock/Boost Clock) in Silent Mode. Gaming Mode boosts the clocks to 1683 MHz / 1822 MHz, while OC Mode tops out at 1708 MHz / 1847 MHz. A MSI GAMING dragon RGB LED is located on the side of the card and can be programed to display any of 16.8 million available colors to match your case modding tastes. It also has a custom 10-phase PCB and Military Class 4 components.

The GeForce GTX 1080 ARMOR 8G and ARMOR 8G OC also use a twin fan cooling setup with the ARMOR 2X Thermal Design. Panted TORX Fan technology and MSI’s Zero Frozr technology are also employed. The ARMOR 8G keeps the stock NVIDIA GPUs speeds, while the ARMOR 8G OC boosts the clocks to 1632 MHz / 1771 MHz.

Moving on, there’s the GeForce GTX 1080 AERO 8G and AERO 8G OC. Both cards have a black and silver design aesthetic and a single radial fan for cooling. The Aero 8G keeps the stock NVIDIA core clock speeds while the Aero 8G OC ups those numbers slightly to 1632 MHz / 1771 MHz.

Finally, there’s the GeForce GTX 1080 SEA HAWK, which sees MSI partnering with Corsair. The SEA HAWK uses the Corsair Hydro Series closed loop liquid cooler to seriously crank up the clock speeds. That means that you’ll see base/boost clocks of 1708 MHz and 1847 MHz respectively.

Unfortunately, pricing and availability is not yet known for MSI’s new GeForce GTX 1080 lineup.